Book Review: Hue 1968 (2017)

By Mark Bowden

By tradition, your first encounter on the morning of Tet was supposed to be a harbinger for the entire year.  If that were true, then Hue’s fate in the New Year would have been sealed.  Its first visitor had been death.  At 152.

If reading is a journey, then this book took me on a long, painful and bloodied one.

Suffice to say, for its realism, and the obvious journalistic intentions shown, this book has served a worthy purpose in conveying a critical development in the American War in Vietnam.  For after the Battle of Hue, the world’s public opinion turned against America’s involvement in Vietnam.  In the United States, the discussion was no longer how long before it wins the war, but rather how to pull out from the conflict.

Mark Bowden weaves together a few ongoing narratives to convey the Battle of Hue with a critical perspective.  In the forefront is the narrative about the U.S. Marines that fought to retake the ancient imperial city of Hue against a successful surprise offensive on the eve of Tet (the Lunar New Year) in 1968 launched by the North Vietnamese forces.

I think the author has made a commendable effort in researching each character.  With details that layer the narrative with color and complexity, the book readily resonates with readers.  Certainly no less so for the ones on the enemy’s lines, I quickly appreciated the perspectives on both sides as the story unfolds.  In many occasions, I felt an incredible sadness when on a previous page I read about a character, then learning that this person would meet the near-inevitable fate of death on the next.  It was heart-wrenching but powerful.

The story of La Chu seized my attention.  Duped “this f—–g place” (TFP) by the marines, La Chu was the command center of the Viet Cong forces, at the time unbeknownst to Lieutenant Colonel Sweet or the U.S. forces.  In leading his battalion’s fateful first march into La Chu, Captain Sweet came under severe attacks.  The enemy waited till the marines were well into the woods to launch attacks, and effectively surrounding them.  Due to supply shortage, weather and jungle conditions, neither artillery nor air support was possible.  The battalion was expected in Hue to fight the battles there.  The commanders ordered the battalion to move forward and get to Hue.  Sweet knew that to move forward would be suicidal.

The story developed in a breathless intensity as the author takes readers through Sweet’s very dangerous maneuver in leading what was left of the battalion out of La Chu.  For the lack of a better word, the marines sneaked out during the night in a silent march.  It was an act of heroic survival.

In due course, the U.S. forces would capture La Chu.  But even then, the significance and the overwhelming preparedness of the North Vietnamese forces in La Chu was still underestimated on the commander level.

The perspective of the journalists reporting the battles on the ground serves to convey the sentiment of distrust.  It was with their heroic efforts of reporting the Battle of Hue that the American public and the world audience learned what really happened in Hue.  The persistent official denial of losing all previously-held grounds in Hue was what shocked the world.  Throughout the few weeks between January 31 and February 25, 1968, the journalists braved the battlegrounds in which the U.S. Marines fought to regain Hue block by block.  The journalist reports gave rise to what perhaps was one of the chief casualties of the Battle of Hue in 1968: the trust that the American people had in their public officials.

In fact, Hue was the one place in all of Vietnam that the war had hardly touched.  Its people were not especially supportive of either side in the conflict.  Ho knew that Hue’s Catholics, Buddhists, and intellectuals, while not necessarily friendly to his cause, were also cool to Thieu’s government… the was a tough nut for both the North and the South.  At 45-46.

The places, descriptions, and impressions of Hue in the book recalled the memory of my visit at Hue, and thus giving me the context when I read this book.  But navigating it within the setting of urban battles was an experience of its own.  The author expresses deep sympathies with the civilians that suffered at the cross-fire of North Vietnamese and U.S. forces.  Worse still was the senseless retribution committed by both sides, an enormity that could have been motivated by ideology, or pure viciousness:

The “liberation” of Hue suspended law and order and upended basic decency, giving retribution an official stamp of approval.  It tapped a deep vein of savagery.  At 302

During my visit of Hue, I saw the beautiful Imperial Palace and its citadel.  The Imperial Palace served as the command center for the North Vietnamese during the Battle of Hue.  As such, it met the inevitable fate of bombardment.  Only about 20% of the original structures remain in the imperial ground now.  The destruction of historical and otherwise beautiful structures within Hue was a raw witness to the war and its consequences.